James placed the ethanol fireplace on the old oak floor, right in the space between the sofa and the bookshelf. Last Thursday afternoon, he’d driven out to that home goods store in the suburbs to buy it. The salesclerk, a young girl, had assured him it was the safest model available. “It’s like having a tiny patch of the sun,” she’d said, tapping the glass cover lightly with her finger.
Now he sat on the floor, his back leaning against the sofa. Outside, cold November rain fell, rain streaming down the windowpanes. Inside the fireplace, the flame—with a blue base and an orange core—flickered quietly behind the tempered glass. This wasn’t the bold, unruly blaze of real fire; it was a restrained glow.
He held his hand a few inches from the glass cover, feeling its solid warmth. It reminded him of his childhood, when his mother would mend his socks by the light of a kerosene lamp. On those nights, the lamplight would cast a large shadow of her onto the wall.
The doorbell rang at half-past five. It was the elderly lady from next door, carrying a plate of apple pie. “Saw you bought something new,” she said, glancing past his shoulder into the room. “Fires these days are so quiet, aren’t they?”
He invited her in to sit. The old lady carefully stepped around the fireplace and took a seat on the farthest end of the sofa. They watched the flame together, making small talk about the weather and her son’s job in California. The fireplace’s light softened her face.
“Tom always wanted one like this before he passed away,” she said, tapping her knee gently with her finger. “But I thought it was too modern back then. Now that I look at it, it’s rather nice to see.”
He poured her a cup of tea. When he refilled the fireplace’s fuel, the old lady leaned in for a closer look. “Smells like a hospital,” she said, sniffing the bioethanol, “but it burns clean.”
By seven o’clock, the old lady had gone home. The room fell quiet again, save for the soft crackle of the flame. James pulled out the unfinished letter he’d been writing and reread it by the fireplace’s light. In the flickering glow, the words seemed to take on new meaning.
He realized this was better than a real fireplace. No soot, no need to go out and chop wood in the middle of the night—just add bioethanol, and the warmth came; press a button, and it vanished. There weren’t many things in life he could control, but this was one of them.
The phone rang twice in the kitchen. He didn’t get up. When the second ring cut off, the silence felt particularly heavy. He reached out again for the warmth, as if confirming something existed.
At nine, he poured himself a glass of whiskey. The burn of the alcohol going down his throat echoed the warmth before him in a strange way. Both were temporary comforts, both destined to fade—but in that moment, they were real.
He thought of what his ex-wife had said. She’d claimed there was something missing between them, something real—as if they were just playing house. But the warmth now was real, the rain outside the window was real, and the amber liquid in his glass was real too. Maybe reality wasn’t about the things themselves, but how you felt them.
Later that night, he refilled the fuel once more. This time, he watched how the flame grew a little taller bit by bit, how it lit up the spines of the books on the shelf one by one. Those books he hadn’t touched in ages suddenly felt familiar in the firelight.
The rain stopped. The moon peeked out for a moment, and its cold light mingled with the fireplace’s warm glow on the floor. He sat right on the line where the two lights met, feeling the warmth on his left side and the slight chill on his right.
Finally, he turned off the fireplace. He watched the glass cover slowly fade from orange-red back to clear, the residual warmth lingering in the air like a memory. Tomorrow, he might finish that letter, or make that phone call, or maybe just light up this tiny patch of sun again.
But for now, in the suddenly dark room, he sat quietly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.